Physical Description

Eternity is a place seemingly ripped straight from the pages of science fiction - an orbital ringworld with a radius of 124.6 million kilometers, standing as easily one of the largest and oldest artificial structure known to the universe. The surface of the titanic ring is covered by a variety of biomes, imitating continents, seas, and virtually every planetary condition possible, separated by mile-high walls. The whole ring is maintained and kept running by ancient automated systems, which with a few exceptions are as functional as the day they were built, monitoring and adjusting temperature, humidity, and atmospheric contents. While these systems are simultaneously fascinatingly miraculous and largely unexciting, they also have the important job of guiding in incoming ships to match speeds with the ring, which rotates many times faster than even the fastest ships. If these systems were to stop it would be impossible to land without a heat-shielded craft.

Eternity is, in fact, so large that there are several uncontacted primitive civilisations residing on it; whether they evolved there or were transplanted from somewhere else by the creators is not known.

History

The unknown ancient species who built it did not let the fact that they had not invented faster-than light travel prevent them from strip-mining the surrounding fifty planetary systems and bringing all their metals to its construction, which is estimated to have taken several million years. Where they went when they were done is anyone's guess. They were probably tired.

Currently the whole ring is owned by an itzel who won it while pretending to be a notzel in order to help their notail friend cheat at a high-stakes card game.

Locations

Weather Control Station 13: One of the hundreds of weather control stations that manage sections of Eternity, this station is smashed up and broken. Ancient equipment is strewn across its warren of dark rooms, some of the defunct machinery still sparking or occasionally twitching. The ten-thousand kilometer section of ring it manages therefore experiences conditions somewhat similar to the surface of a star. As one of the very few defunct parts of the ring it is an area of scientific interest, and the scientists are unlikely to approve if a bunch of random visitors show up and start poking around in their piece of ancient history.

Jungle Outpost: Set in a vast rainforest that spreads out over gently rolling hills, this outpost was established by a group of Ybe who are intent on mapping this sector of the ring on foot. The ancient civilisation that built the ring had a city here, but it seems that when they left they turned off the vegetation control, causing the city to be totally swallowed up by jungle. Crumbling ruins of tower blocks filled with trees are everywhere, and every bold young explorer dreams of having a grass-grown plaza named after her.

Command and Control:: This 10-mile high spire of gleaming glass is thought to be Eternity's master control center, housing the computers that manage the ring as a whole and all the manual overrides for local controllers. This is mostly conjecture however, as progress into the tower has been halted by very aggressive automatic defenses that forcibly remove nosy scientists and soldiers from the premises, as well as a series of security doors. There is a large camp on the landing pad outside, where you can find merchants from across the universe selling esoteric objects and snack bars to the geniuses trying to get inside.

It's advised to keep your ship's weapons off when approaching this location, as the command AI has been known to instantly cancel the momentum of vessels it deems a threat, causing them to be struck by the atmosphere at Mach 8.

Special

None

Trivia

• It would take a Hermes ship almost a century to fly all around the ring without any warping.

• Some of the first explorers were concerned about contaminating the world with off-planet diseases, but were unpleasantly surprised when automated caretaker bots ambushed them and stole their blood to make vaccines for the wildlife. That hardly ever happens these days.

• The atmosphere of the Eternity ring is mostly kept in by the same rotation of the ring which provides gravity. That fact was boring so here's another: There is a fauna on this world that looks like a potato grew spider legs and it can retract its legs to hide so you shouldn't eat potatoes here.